The Missouri Supreme Court ruled Thursday that two additional measures will appear on ballots in November.
The unanimous rulings, authored by Justice Ginger Gooch, reverse Secretary of State Denny Hoskins' efforts to block both measures from appearing in front of voters.
One of the measures is a citizen-initiative referendum on the state's new congressional map, which was controversially redrawn by the Republican-controlled legislature last fall.
The other is a constitutional amendment that would establish a high threshold for the legislature to repeal voter-approved laws.
The map referendum will appear on ballots as Proposition A, and the amendment will appear as Amendment 6.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway released a statement saying she would appeal the decision.
"Never before in American history has a court overturned a congressional map after a primary and before a general election," Hanaway said. "This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis."
Both measures were the subject of a year's worth of legal wrangling, all culminating in a state Supreme Court battle on Wednesday.
The gerrymandered maps were approved last October at the urging of President Donald Trump, seeking to turn one of the state's two Democratic seats into a Republican seat.
Midterm elections historically see losses by the party of the incumbent president, and Trump has been encouraging states to redraw congressional districts — normally done every 10 years after the federal census — for the fall election.
When the court heard arguments Wednesday, much of the state’s focus was on the potentially harmful ramifications of abandoning a map that had already been used in the August primary election. Any changes, state lawyers argued, would degrade trust in the electoral system.
However, the court’s decision puts the blame on Hoskins for his repeated efforts to avoid certifying the map referendum, stating that any confusion about the maps was “caused by the secretary of state’s delay.”
Hoskins’ opposition to the referendum “fundamentally misunderstand(s)” the map’s status pending a popular vote, the decision concluded.
The congressional seat ruling directly affects U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat, and state Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville.
Now Cleaver will be running for re-election in his heavily Democratic district. Brattin had entered the race because the 5th Congressional District redrawn by the GOP majority in the legislature included conservative rural areas that are dependably Republican based on past voting trends.
In a statement, Brattin called the ruling "blatantly unconstitutional."
"With the stroke of a pen, the Missouri Supreme Court has disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters who cast their ballot in the 5th District in the primary, only to be thrown into another district entirely — and with candidates they did not have a chance to vote on — for the General Election," he said.
The decision on Amendment 6 means voters will decide whether to make it more difficult for legislators to overturn laws voters have approved at the ballot box.
“For more than 118 years, Missourians have had the power to put issues directly before the voters,” Eric Bronner, co-founder of Veterans for All Voters, said in a news release.
“Amendment 6 is about protecting that right and making sure that when Missourians vote for something, politicians can’t simply undo their decision after the election,” he said.
Amendment 6, if approved, would require 80% approval of both chambers of the legislature before lawmakers can send changes of a voter-approved initiative back to voters for them to reconsider.
In placing Amendment 6 on the ballot, the court rejected Hoskins' claims that the measure violated the Missouri Constitution by attempting to change more than one section of state law.
“It also complies with the constitution’s single-subject requirement because all its provisions relate to the single overarching subject of protecting Missouri citizens’ constitutionally reserved lawmaking power through initiative and referenda,” Gooch wrote in her opinion.
Thursday's rulings mark another set of losses for Missouri Republicans, who have struggled to build momentum in the lead-up to the midterms.
The August primary saw an overwhelming defeat of an effort by legislators to make it more difficult for citizens to amend the Missouri Constitution. That proposal lost in every county in the state and gained less than 20% of the statewide vote.